In the Master's garden peace and plenty reigned. The hose played all day long; the grass was a joy, green as perennial youth; the flowers nodded at him in full satisfaction, and he sat and smiled at them, "feeling good," as the Americans say.
I went home and noted the brown lawn, in which even the plantains were beginning to turn colour, and thought of my border, and "felt bad." Even the brilliant yellow of my two round beds, staring like sunflowers, full among the starving, failed to comfort me.
It is always the one lamb crying in the wilderness that pulls the true shepherd's heart away from the ninety and nine trim little sheep safe in the fold.
Jim was very busy those days and more or less deserted me. One of the Others, a mankind from Sandhurst, divided his allegiance, and holidays and cricket absorbed him.
"One has to slack off a bit," he said, "and old Griggs can water. I'll come on again in the autumn; there will be some work with those tap-roots, you know."